Prepared by Tatyana Pavlova, a graduate student of the Department of Cultural Studies at the Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education "Saint Petersburg Institute of Culture"OKSANA DOBZHANSKAYA, Doctor of Art History, Professor of the Department of Art History at the Arctic State Institute of Culture and Arts:— In general, the Arctic is a multicultural
space. Along with the culture of the in-
digenous peoples (aboriginals) there are
cultural layers of alien population, and
they are very different in time and histori-
cal epochs. For example, at the mouth of
the river Indigirka (the so-called Russian
Mouth) the culture of immigrants from
Novgorod lands of the 16th-17th cen-
turies is still preserved, but completely
lost in their homeland – in the modern
Novgorod region.
The cultural space of the Arctic is incon-
ceivable without the history of the 20th
century. Here, an important place is oc-
cupied by the subject of the industrial
development of the North, the subject of
the Soviet social and cultural develop-
ment, and the tragic subject of the Gulag.
All of these subjects are reflected in songs,
stories and novels, drawings, paintings,
sculptures, architecture – in works of art.
The culture of the modern Arctic is simi-
lar to a multi-layered cake, each layer of
which is unique in the sense of its histori-
cal formation and cultural significance.
Now that the Arctic is recognized by so-
ciety as a vital part of the socio-economic
space of Russia, particularly relevant is the
study of this distinctive cultural territory
that should become cozy and comfortable
for people's living, i.e. their homeland.
YANA IGNATYEVA, YANA IGNATYEVA, Director General of the Autonomous Institution of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) "A.E. Kulakovskiy House of International Friendship", Honored Worker of Culture of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia):— The Arctic culture is a special culture, quite different from any other. Its
special features are dictated primarily by climatic conditions. Its special
plastique distinguishes the dance culture, the poetic language of its both
dances and songs; it is absolutely unlike to anything else! This is the value
of any culture, including the Arctic. In the Republic, we have kept examples
of the Arctic culture, we can say, in their original form.
The perestroika time largely contributed to it. At
this stage, we must do everything to prevent
the loss of cultural identity of the peoples
living in the Arctic region. Unfortunately,
we do not have a target governmental
program that would be aimed at the
study, preservation, and revival of the
traditional culture of the Arctic peoples.
There is a federal target program called
"Preservation of the Intangible Cultural
Heritage", unfortunately, it doesn’t
work here in Yakutia. Besides, within just
3-5 years we need to develop programs and
preservation mechanisms. The work tasks of the
A.E. Kulakovskiy House of International Friendship
include the preservation of the culture of the indigenous peoples of the
North: dance and folk ensembles are created, we develop arts and crafts.
Moreover, for the further development of creative endeavors and for their
continuation, we need funds again, a target governmental state program is
necessary. The second very important point is manpower development in
order to prepare the younger generation to accept the legacy and become
worthy successors of traditions. For this purpose it is necessary to train
specialists, teachers, stage directors, folklorists, and others. For example,
the Arctic Institute graduates have to work in their specialty in the Arctic
uluses. The conditions there are undoubtedly severe, and therefore, again,
there is a need for support mechanisms to stimulate young professionals.
www.sakhamemory.ruThe Space of Arctic Art & Culture

METAGEOGRAPHY OF CULTURE. IMAGINATIVE CIVILIZATIONAL STRATEGY FOR MODERNIZATION In terms of methodology, no discrimination is made between po-
litical, economic, social, cultural, or any other aspects of moderni-
zation. This is a comprehensive problem, the concept itself imply-
ing strong reference to emerging, developing, and overtaking time.
There could be many times in fact, as many as there are human
communities and civilizations with their reflexive processes of re-
producing, adapting, appropriating, comprehending, and imagining
time and its components. Yet modernization processes are not in-
terpreted adequately unless matters of spatial imagination and spa-
tial reflection are taken into account. Authentic times and spaces
of civilizations are pillar stones of their self-reflection, determining
their vital capacities and horizons.
Local civilizations undergoing recurrent modernizations and
spatializations (i.e. comprehending and imagining their own land)
have to design ever new time and space patterns in response to both
internal and external challenges (political, social, cultural, and
etc.). Accordingly, every civilization appears as a strong or weak
“radiant” of original space-time images, signs and symbols enabling
it either to extend its influence or to balance the gradual loss of
traditional domains. It is actually a matter of image-civilizations es-
tablishing, in our age of globalization, an unstable, changeable and
“floating” mental field engaging the communications, symbioses,
clashes and conflicts of different conceptions of civilisation.
Metageography is therefore seen as a cross-disciplinary frame-
work organizing knowledge in the fields of sciences, arts and phi-
losophy to identify, establish and represent major space (geographi-
cal) patterns of each specific local civilization. Culture interpreted
by Rev. Pavel Florensky as mainly the opening up and explaining
space provides an immediate ontological basis for metageogra-
phy. Consequently, metageography of culture is a strategic plan-
ning structure that transforms identified, created, and represented
space-image sets of particular civilizations into consistent applica-
tion strategies on social, governmental and regional levels.
An imaginative (iconic) modernization strategy implies a sub-
stantive and institutional organization of cultural metageography
for certain civilization, to devise special-purpose strategies in ed-
METAGEOGRAPHY OF CULTURE:RUSSIAN CIVILIZATION AND THE NORTH EURASIAN DEVELOPMENT VECTOR1T
he new term of "metageography of culture" is introduced and
explained. The concept of metageograhy is explored with
regard to various interpretations of geoculture. Issues of the
emerging North Eurasian image are addressed in the context
of geocultural development of Russian civilization. Prospects of successful
modernization for Russian civilization closely correlate with imaginative
geocultural development of Siberia, the Far East and the Arctic.
Keywords:metageography, culture, geoculture, geographical image, North Eurasia, Siberia, geo ideology, Russian civilization Dmitry ZAMIATIN,
Doctor of Culturology,
Chief staff scientist,
Head of Geocultural Regional Politics
Centre at D.S. Likhachev Research
Institute for Cultural
and Natural Heritage,
Moscow
1

ucation, sciences, cultural institutions, cultural and political ide-
ologies of long-term (metaphysical) effects, and to produce stable,
authentic, and “competitive” images, signs, and symbols. Russia as
a specific, comparatively young and yet unsteady, with the ideol-
ogy and image not quite “crystallized” to date, is sorely in need of
this strategy. The imaginative civilizational strategy in Russia can
lay down the ontological foundation not only for its survival as a
civilization, but also for balanced development in cooperation with
other local civilizations.
GEOCULTURE AND METAGEOGRAPHY: SUBSTANTIVE INTERACTION An interpretation as an investigation procedure generally re-
quires positioning a subject of the investigation or a test objective in
a broader research (cognitive) space, that is to say, in a broader and
meaningful context. It is thus necessary to define the laws of devel-
opment and the scope of this space framework originally viewed as
substantive. This might be described as a way to define or “measure”
the content level of major premises of the subject of the investiga-
tion or the test objective.
An interpretation of geocultural (cultural-geographic) images
suggests passing to a meta-level as compared to representation pro-
cesses (i.e. representations of social phenomena) where a single im-
age field combines signs, symbols and stereotypes differing in gen-
esis, structure and composition, and generating, in the course of the
interpretation, serial patterns projected on a “perceptive screen”.
Culture in this case attracts a scientific interest as a product of im-
aginative geographical interpretations [14].
METAGEOGRAPHY: SUBJECT AND METHODMetageography is an interdisciplinary field of knowledge involv-
ing sciences, philosophy and arts (in a broader sense) and exploring
various potentials, conditions, modes and discourses of geographi-
cal thinking and imagination. Among the candidate synonyms for
metageography are landscape philosophy, geophilosophy, space
(site) philosophy, existential geography, geosophy or, in some
cases, imagination geography, imaging (image-making) geography,
geopoetics, space poetics. The concept of metageography is inter-
preted by analogy with Aristotelian distinction between physics
and metaphysics, both in logics and content.
Rationalistic and scientific approaches only describe the subject
of metageography in terms of general geographical laws. These
started from general physical geography in the first part of the 20th
century, although the original and fundamental principles taken as
the metageographical ones today were proposed by German geog-
rapher Karl Ritter [32, p.353-556; 8; 13, p.7-16] in the early 19th
century. An important contribution was made by classical geopoli-
tics (late 19th and early 20th century) using the traditional map as
a matter of metaphysical and geosophic speculation [15, p.97-116].
Interest in metageography within the frame of geographical science
in the period between the 1950s and 1970s was enhanced with the
advance of mathematical methods, the systems approach and vari-
ous logic-mathematical models designed to explain and interpret
more general geographical laws [7, 10, 40, 33, 2, 25]. By late 20-th
and early 21st century the concept of metageography was criticized
in terms of the traditional scientific paradigm focusing on case-
studies, and almost restricted to peripheral discourse [43]. Mean-
while, latent metageographical problem posing persists in modern
studies of landscape images, geographical imagination, symbolic
landscapes, or landscape/memory correlations [44, 45, 46]. Philo-
sophically, discursive potentials of metageography were defined by
Martin Heidegger in the first part of the 20th century, in his early
phenomenological version (the Sein und Zeit [Being and Time],
1927), as well as in subsequent existential work (essays written be-
tween the 1950s and 1960s, including the Bauen Wohnen Denken
[Building, dwelling, thinking], ...dichterisch wohnet der Mensch
[Man’s poetic housing], Die Kunst und der Raum [Art and Space),
Das Ding [The Thing], etc.). [37, 38, 39, с.176-190]. Metageogra-
phy is also grounded on various phenomenological studies of space
and place including, among other fundamental works, those by G.
Bachelard in the 1940s and 1950s [3, 4, 5; 28, pp. 5-213]. Progress in
semiotics, post-structuralism and post-modernism promoted philo-
sophical interest in metageographical issues between late 1960s and
1980s (works by M. Foucault, G. Deleuze or P.-F. Guattari; intro-
duction into philosophical discourse of the concepts of heterotopy,
geophilosophy, de-territorialization and re-territorialization) [11,
12, 20; 36, pp. 191-205]. Finally, the vigorous globalization process-
es together with the conceptual “drift” of philosophy towards in-
vestigations in broader and interdisciplinary fields of knowledge by
the late 20th and early 21st century stipulated metaphysical studies
of terrestrial space [24, 28, 35].
In the arts, metageographic issues as such were first addressed
early in the 20th century in belletristic literature (by M. Proust, J.
Joyce, Andrey Bely, F. Kafka, V. Khlebnikov), painting and theo-
retical manifests of the futurists, cubists and suprematists, and ar-
chitectural design of F. L. Wright. This imaginative interpretation
of terrestrial space paralleled a theoretical revolution in physics
(relativity, quantum theory) and the advance of anthropogeog-
raphy. The artistic and literary avant-garde (first represented by
Kandinsky, Malevich, El Lisitsky, Klee, Platonov, Leonidov, Vve-
densky, Harms, and then by Beckett) viewed and imagined space
as existential ontology of man per se. The second surge of Euro-
pean avant-garde (1940-1960) actually reproduced initial positions
without contributing any radical novelties. The principal trend was
exploiting synthetic spatial experiments of Chinese and Japanese
art in painting, graphic works, calligraphy, and poetry – among
others, by A. Michot).
By the early 21st century, metageographic experiments and stud-
ies were generally restricted to imaginative literature, philosophy,
and plastic arts, with scientific representation being unimportant.
Metageography is therefore seen as a cross-disciplinary framework organizing knowledge in the fields of sciences, arts and philosophy to identify, establish and represent major space (geographical) patterns of each specific local civilizationCulture and Civilization
Arctic Art & Culture • June• 201532
Arctic Art & Culture • June• 201533

Metageography on the whole is characterized by amalgamation and
coexistence of different textual traditions: imaginative, philosophic
or scientific; an “essay” emerges as an important genre allowing free
description and interpretation of metageographic issues [9, 19; 30,
pp. 4-5; 31]. The rapid advance of new technologies (computer,
video and the Internet) stimulates new metageographic represen-
tations and interpretations (matters of virtual spaces or hypertexts
only indirectly relating to actual places or areas).
In terms of content, metageography deals with regularities and
characteristics of mental dissociation from actual experience in
perceiving and imagining terrestrial space. An essential element of
this dissociation is analysis of the existential experience of various
landscapes and places – both personal and that of others. In terms
of axiomatics, metageography implies the existence of mental pat-
terns, charts and images of “parallel” spaces accompanying images
of reality sociologically dominating in each specific age. The growth
and sociological domination of mass culture also promote down-to-
earth, para-scientific versions of metageography (similar to those of
sacral geography) focusing on discovering and registering all kinds
of “power spots”, “mystic places”, and the like.
With regard to ideology, metageography and specific metageo-
graphic experiments may effect artistic movements, scientific or phil-
osophic trends, sociopolitical or sociocultural concepts of intellectual
communities. Conceptually, metageography interacts substantively
with humanitarian and cultural geography, geopoetics, art geogra-
phy, geophilosophy, sacral geography, architecture, myth geography,
geocultural studies, and various artistic and literary practices.
TOWARDS A KEY ELEMENT IN A METAGEOGRAPHY OF RUSSIA The fundamental metageographic problem in Russia is for-
mulated as follows: ideological inertia of ancient imaginative-
geography sets “holding” the country to the west of the Urals
and inhibiting mental dissociation from Europe. Accordingly,
the principal metageographic challenge that Russia has been fac-
ing for almost four centuries is defined as a search for attractive
and efficient ideological images of trans-Ural area, for a mental
“turn” of the country eastward, towards Siberia, the Far East,
Central Asia, and China. Of course, the strata built up in Russian
civilization’s European communications will remain as a basis
for future civilizational and metageographic development, since
the question is of an alternative new geo-ideological vector and
trans-Ural transfer of the metageographic “centre of gravity”.

GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGES OF SIBERIA: SPECIFICITY OF FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENTGeographical images of Siberia as a generalized entirety arise from
sustained retranslation of ideal images of European landscapes into
original sense perceptions of trans-Ural landscapes. One can well
understand that similar mental activities have been persistent, and
quite vigorous, since the days of the great explorers, and that, in this
case, Siberia is absolutely no different to Americas, Africa or South
and South-East Asia colonized by West-Europe [23, p. 88-95; 16,
p. 41-49; 17, p. 136-142; 18, p. 45-60]. However, having come to
the Ural frontier and crossed the Rock, Russia began reproducing
the images with a certain mental delay, arriving somewhat “late” in
terms of history and geosophy, guided first by classical colonialist
images with sacral-mythic and Bible-Christian implications, and
then by more “profaned” patterns of prosaic West-European settle-
ments as “islets of comfort” in the “ocean” of wild or little explored
nature. So the first Russian wordy description of trans-Ural area,
the 15-th century Tale of Strange Folks, provides an evident exam-
ple of the first approach to be further developed in standard annals
and ecclesiastical writing [26], while Anton Chekhov’s lapidary Out
of Siberia gives a perfect idea of the second approach. Nevertheless,
highly impressive images of cold, snowy, monotonous plains, the
taiga, steppes and swamplands go with empty spaces and pagan sav-
agery accompanied with mythical or real riches.
The mental-ideological retranslation in creating and reproducing
geographical images of Siberia, a complementary spatial transaction
due to the inter-civilizational position of Russia (remember that it
was still the Moscow Kingdom in the 16th- and 17th century, gen-
erally dominated by byzantine mental and ideological standards of
the sacral order and mainly of South-European and Middle-Eastern
origin [27, 6, 41]), resulted in a significant introtroversion where
images of Siberia could be and, in fact, were perceived (and, of
course, reproduced regularly) as some “inherent” Asian images that
European civilization needed to maintain mental balance to the east
– Russia being both a geo-ideological “pupil” and an “agent” secur-
ing (even if in part) the “home delivery” of the mental product. It is
wrong to regard this civilizational and metageographical situation
as on the decline: the vast trans-Ural territories almost suddenly
falling under the Moscow Kingdom’s influence required adequate
and well-grounded geographical images. These were successfully
“imported” and adapted by Russian culture “recognizing” them as
quite organic; the "Siberian Tartary" is not only the West-European
but also the Russian image that was absolutely “functional” between
the 16th and 18th century.
METAGEOGRAPHY OF SIBERIA AS THE “COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS” A mediator would sooner or later run the risk of facing an am-
bivalent image lacking external support and replenishment and
thus becoming unruled and unpredictable. This is the case of the
geographical images of Siberia appearing, to a certain extent, as
a profound “unconscious” of Europe and the West at large on
the East-Eurasian frontier, and, automatically, as Russia’s “un-
conscious”.
2
Since the emergence of the American frontier as
Siberia’s foreign geo-ideological twin in the 19th century (the
fact being admitted by the mid-19th century) [22, p.75-89], Eu-
rope wanted Siberia as a close-by peripheral resource, which was
2 To elaborate the well-known post-Freudian discourse of B. Grois on historiosophic and culturosophic ambivalence of West/Russia relations by analogy with C. Jung’s depth psychology; cf.: B. Grois.
Russia as the subconscious of the West, in: id. The Art of Utopia. М.: Khudozhestvennyi zhurnal, 2003, pp. 150—168.
3 At greater length: Zamiatin D.N. Geocracy…; analysis of universal questions in the history and theory of Siberian regionalism, in: Alexeev V.V., Alexeeva E.V., Zubkov K.I., Poberezhnikov I.V. Asiatic
Russia in geopolitical and geo-civilizational dynamics from the 16th to 20th century. М.: Nauka, 2004, pp. 411—448 (section on “Siberian regionalism: background and evolution” – K.I. Zubkov, M.V.
Shilovsky.); also: Siberian regionalism: bibliogr. guide. Tomsk—Moscow: Vodolei, 2002; Goriushkin L.M. The case of Siberia’s secession from Russia, in: Otechestvo. Yearbook of local studies. Iss. 6. М.:
Otechestvo, 1995, pp. 66—84; Potanin G.N. A regionalistic trend in Siberia. ibid. pp. 84—100; Svatikov S.G. Russia and Siberia, ibid., pp. 100—113; www.oblastnichestvo.lib.tomsk.ru etc.
Culture and Civilization